Cessna,Learjet, and Boeing's
military division, Wichita claims
the title of Air Capitalof the World.
term her style "naive." Marijana calls it
"memory painting." Whatever the label, her
works delight the eye with their Croatian
flavor of life on the hill as it once was
- women carrying bundles of grain on their
heads, men playing pinochle, a traveling
vendor called Harry the Huckster, and
youngsters in bright Croatian dress stepping
to the sounds of stringed tamburitzas.
The music and dancing still bind together
this intensely proud neighborhood, but
Strawberry Hill feels the growing pains of
the metropolitan area. Interstate 70 took a
hundred homes when it was carved along
the riverside bluffs. Down the hill, devel
oper R. G. Cotitta tries to reverse the de
cline of the downtown area.
Kansas City, Kansas, part of a metropoli
tan area of 1.5 million residents spread over
ten counties in two states, has long been
overshadowed by its bigger neighbor across
the river, Kansas City, Missouri. Cotitta's
Capital Development Corporation has em
barked on the third phase of its Renaissance
Center Project: the creation of prime office
space by removal or renovation of old build
ings along Minnesota Avenue.
"Urban renewal came in here and im
proved the streets, put in new lighting, cre
ated parking space, and developed a new
city hall and convention center,"
Cotitta
told me as we strolled by a storefront being
gutted by workmen. Several of his buildings
are already occupied and Cotitta is optimis
tic, declaring: "The reversal of the decline of
downtown is well under way."
N O SUCH EFFORTS are needed
just south of the city limits. There,
where
blue-collar
Wyandotte
County meets decidedly white-collar John
son County, Greater Kansas City's boom
town, the challenge is to keep up with the
breakneck growth. Along College Boule
vard in Overland Park, six million square
feet of prime office space has been developed
over the past decade. Forty of the Fortune
500 corporations maintain offices in sleek
office parks with names such as Corporate
Woods and Executive Hills.
Boosters declare there's no end in sight to
the dizzying growth of Johnson County.
"I hate to say it because we live here,
but this is the finest residential area in the
Home to Kansas
375